Vote Recount to Settle Doubts?

Kim Zetter
11.17.04

A vote recount in New Hampshire on Thursday could shed light on anomalies with election results in that state, voting activists say. And if the recount finds problems with voting machines there, it could open the way for recounts in other states, such as Florida.

Presidential candidate Ralph Nader requested the recount, which will include only a small percentage of voting districts in the state where anomalies appeared in the election results. New Hampshire uses a combination of traditional paper ballots and optical-scan machines -- where voters mark a paper ballot with a pen before officials scan it through an electronic infrared reader. The anomalies occurred mostly in districts that used optical-scan machines.

Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign was closing up shop and paying off its debts when it received several requests to look at data from a number of New Hampshire voting districts. "There was enough to it that made it worthwhile to at least check it out," he said.

The data came from Ida Briggs, a Michigan voter with 20 years of experience as a software programmer, including eight years as a statistical analyst of databases for the telecommunications industry. Briggs compared this year's New Hampshire votes with those cast in 2000.

Most people would have expected John Kerry's performance at the polls this year to be similar to Al Gore's in 2000. And in 229 out of 300 voting districts, or wards as they're called in New Hampshire, that was the case. Kerry either matched the percentage of votes that Gore received in 2000 in those wards or did better than Gore. But in 71 wards, Briggs found, Bush did better in 2004 than he did in 2000.

When Briggs broke the 71 wards down by voting equipment -- separating wards into those that used traditional paper ballots and those that used optical-scan machines -- she discovered that 73 percent of the wards used optical-scan equipment, while only 27 percent used traditional paper ballots. Even more interesting was the breakdown per brand of voting equipment. New Hampshire wards used optical-scan equipment made by Diebold Election Systems and Election Systems & Software. About 62 percent of the wards with anomalous results used Diebold machines.

"Which is pretty high," Briggs said. "Especially in comparison to hand-counted paper ballots, which accounted for only 27 percent of the out-of-trend wards."

In one ward in the city of Manchester, the change was remarkable. In 2000, Gore beat Bush 49 percent to 48 percent. But this year Bush carried the ward with 53 percent of votes. In another Manchester ward where Gore won 52 percent to Bush's 44 percent in 2000, Bush won with 50 percent to Kerry's 49 percent this year.

"The numbers could be real," Briggs said. "But to be this dramatically outside of the trend raises some red flags."

Some people have explained away the numbers as a result of affluent Massachusetts voters moving to New Hampshire to take advantage of its tax system. These transplants would be more likely to vote for Bush. But Briggs thinks this is too anecdotal and shouldn't be used to dismiss the numbers.

"It's also anecdotal that urban voters tend to vote more liberal than rural voters, but in New Hampshire we see that trend reversed," she said.

Briggs said the wards with surprising numbers account for about 235,000 votes, at least 200,000 of which are in wards that used Diebold machines. This is significant because earlier this year, activists found security flaws in the Diebold counting software that could allow someone with access to the system to alter votes.

But Briggs stressed that there was nothing to indicate fraud.

"My take is this could simply be a glitch. And if someone made a mistake, then it's an easy find," she said. "Thank God New Hampshire has a paper trail so we can just sit down and count the paper ballots."